Skills to survive? If jobs are gone? How to multiply what we have?

I am in Perth, so naturally must write one or two articles for kopiandproperty.com from Perth, right? I enjoyed it a lot thus far,my second trip within 2 years. Yesterday morning, I was having my breakfast and noticed this. The world is changing fast. Jobs come today, gone tomorrow. Many traditional and manual kind of jobs especially those that is harder to hire will have to be replaced by robots or machines. It’s not because the company hates humans but these companies have to survive and they do not wish to have hiring and retaining plus retaining problems. With assistance from robots /machines, there is no need to do lots of hiring or even firing when times are slow. I was reminded of this sobering fact today in Perth. Look at the image. A machine which takes orders and allows customers to pay immediately. There were no queues to order at all! Everyone orders and sits down to wait until their number is announced. By the way, the minimum wage in Perth is AUD640.90 (RM2,053) per week or AUD16.87 (RM54) per hour. We can read about the minimum wage here.

Actually, when we look at this minimum wage, I think Australians working and staying in Perth should not find it too hard to survive, even with their current property price. A typical lunch in the usual cafes would only cost less than AUD20. This is only around an hour’s work. Meals in fast food restaurants would be cheaper. Well, car prices is not cheap when compared to the U.S, Japan or Germany but it is still considered cheap in relation to their salary. I have no idea how much can one save with this wage but assuming it’s just 20% per month? That’s AUD510 per month. In a year, this would be AUD6,152. I think Australians can start migrating to cheaper ASEAN countries when they need to retire. AUD6,152 x 30 years x just 2% up per year is going to be a lot of money in many ASEAN nations. 🙂 Okay, perhaps not in Singapore. One thing I noticed however is the fact that low salary is still an issue here, especially with the potential of a higher tax. Look at an article in a local newspaper here.

I think it’s important to note that even when the minimum wage is high, it does not take away the fact that without any skills which will always be sought after or an investment to multiply what we have, we will still face an uncertain future in future. An accountant may have a better chance of keeping his job than a manual worker and paid higher too but not everyone can become an accountant. A doctor too, for that matter unless there are way too many doctors. Even lawyers who are not so awesome in ‘arguing’ will struggle too. One common thing is that everyone have access to good investment books (think Western Australia state library) and could even read all these free articles in many media sites and even tiny blogs like kopiandproperty.com too. Perhaps another way may be to just work harder and save even more. One loaf of bread is less than AUD1 anyway. (economy house brand). Generally, I think it’s applicable to everyone, even those in Singapore or Malaysia. G’day Mate.

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According to Credit Suisse Research Institude published in Nov 2016, Australians’ average wealth per adult is the second highest in the world at US$376,000, next only to Switzerland which leads massively at US$562,000.